Getting Physical

I was a loser at getting physical.

I mean I could never hold up to playing any sport. I just didn’t have the  stamina for physical activities like sports. Whaddya expect having grown up on a diet of thayir saadam, erumai paal and mutakosu kari? And having spent the first ten years of my life falling ill with all the unmentionables like jaundice, typhoid, chicken pox, and other enticing feverish manifestations, I was a sick girl- in head and body. I quaked easily ( now I can combat unarmed to the teeth); and was pencil-thin (and now I’m plump) and could never speak up ( everyone’s asking me to shut up these days). 

PT class was a bad word in my lexicon. It came close to maths. I was a methodical girl. Each evening, before dinner, I would sit with my time-table sheet to pack my school satchel for the morrow. And while I winced at the maths class, I quavered like a leaf in fall when it promised PT for the next day. Twice a week it was, and it was real bad for me. 

In the convent, Frieda Miss ( call me Preeda, she warned us) and I had one thing in common. We traced our roots back to the south-she was from Nagercoil and I from neighbouring Nellai. But that didn’t hold her back from reserving special treatment for me that included making me run “Pie rounds” for standing out of line. Was I? I lived in a quiet haze in those days and would be rudely awakened by Preeda saying, “Ei, you are out of line- go run pie rounds”. And off in sweltering white heat of the Madras noon I would amble, because PT class was always after lunch, so that we could work off the heaviness of our measely idlis.

I would finish to perspiration clouding my vision and Preeda would screech, “Lept, lept right, lept right, porward march”.  I have forgotten the number of times I collapsed in a heap during the march around the vast school playground; the number of times I’ve had paneer soda splashed on my face rudely to waken me up. 

Much later during my final years in a co-ed school, we had another vision:PT saar . He wore tight white trousers and a fitting tee with white canvas shoes and a black belt. The boys whispered that he was a deviant.  He tried his best to help me throw a volley ball and send it across the nets. No avail. While others flicked it with a little tap of their hands, my best punches would only send it landing at my feet. Hopskotch was okay, playing a card game of Rummy was kinder to my arms and carrom was only good enough until I began to grow my nails and paint them in my teens. I tried badminton after the fashion of our times, a la Leena Chandavarkar, but it didn’t last long either. Later at college a friend who was a student at SIET college that had a swimming pool only for women ( we were exempt from wearing the burkha by the pool) smuggled a summer course pass for me to learn swimming for a month. That was the last time I ever kicked my legs into action of the sporty kind ever.

But learning a sport is a great way to build camaraderie in your neighbourhood, win fans of the opposite sex and collect pals and build stamina. Today pre teens and children have middle class parents ready to shell a bomb to send them to coaching classes for football, cricket, buy them imported and grade-1 roller skates, swimming, horse riding and more to keep them away from those dreaded TV addiction. Shah Rukh Khan, who ups Sri Sri Ravishankar in doling free advice on all matters small or big, says sports is a good way to get quota mileage and secure a seat into college than worry about high school grades and endorses cricket matches with latest Bollywood nymphets on his arms and buys cricket clubs for big money.

Would I have done better if I were 14 today?

I’ve a nagging feeling I’d be a telly tubby and hang out with the girls for a laugh.And the only sporting activity that I’d give a nod to would be to sledging and jockeying with the frisky lads by the Madras beachfront. But then laziness is the privilege of the talentless. So there.